Bye Bye, Twitter. Hello, Plurk.
June 3, 2008 – 11:42 am | by Daryl TayTwitter’s downtime over the last couple of months has really pissed off a lot of people, most of all me. And I’m a #1 Twitter advocate. I mentioned it as a conference, been interviewed in the papers on Twitter, I wrote how to guides, encouraged an SMU Twitter challenge, the works.
I tried to be tolerant, but waking up every morning and finding out that Twitter isn’t working just disappoints.
First I turned to FriendFeed, with the new Room function, I was hopeful that it would be a nice replacement, but that has yet to gain any traction, at least in the Singaporeans Room. It just lacks the personal element that Twitter has. (Had?)
Enter Plurk. It has the same personal element that Twitter did, an innovative timeline system (takes some time to get used to) and a personality that I’d call… quirky. There are some elements I don’t like, let informing me about comments on posts I don’t care about, and the timeline interface is a little chunky and takes some time getting used to (I can’t imagine my 300 followers on it), but the introduction of cliques has officially won me over.
Cliques
Basically these are groups or segments that you can form within your followers. I blogged once about using Twitter like IRC and spamming the rest of your contact. No worries about that on Plurk. I’ve separated my chatter from my proper Plurking, and am very happy with the results. I can have fun, personal conversations without disturbing the rest of my followers.
Since Twitter seems to be spending all its time just putting out fires, I don’t think I can look forward to similar improvements from them anytime soon.
In the last 24 hours that I’ve joined Plurk, I’ve seen plenty of Twitter folk move over. chrisbrogan, colinwalker, daphnemaia, derrickkwa, foxtwo, hendri, howiec, jljohansen, kevinlim, kevyn, litford, marinamartin, mhisham, mintea, moby74, nicole85, ridz84, rinaz, scabr, sentosagirl, shahw, sonnygill, waynesutton and yuhui. Add them by typing http://plurk.com/user/[username].
That’s almost 10% of my network on Twitter. The value for Twitter now is the 300 or so contacts I painfully built up over five months. But unfortunately at this point in time, I’d rather move than stick with a network that doesn’t work. Do connect with me on Plurk at http://plurk.com/user/uniquefrequency
Tags: bye twitter, hello plurk, move from twitter to plurk, Plurk, plurk cliques, plurk rocks, twitter downtime, twitter sucks, uniquefrequency
9 Responses to “Bye Bye, Twitter. Hello, Plurk.”
By Daphne Maia on Jun 3, 2008 | Reply
don’t bluff! u’re still twittering, and dominating my entire twitter page cos no one else is there! hahaha. *cough*
By Daryl Tay on Jun 3, 2008 | Reply
@Daphne Maia: Uhm. It’s not my fault. Trying to encourage the rest of my network to switch. SEE? If Twitter had Cliques, you wouldn’t have to read all of that cos I could organise to “Twitters on Plurk” and “Twitters not on Plurk”.
By WishBoNe on Jun 3, 2008 | Reply
How come u didn’t mention me?
*sulks*
Plurk is fun and distracting.
Side note: Pls allow mobile version to view your site too. It’s horrible scrolling.
By yixiaooo on Jun 4, 2008 | Reply
hey daryl, i was thinking of using twitter for soon-to-be-launched SMU Gourmet Club website and there is this new Plurk toy… now i’m worried there will be something new 2 months down the road… urgh.
By Daryl Tay on Jun 4, 2008 | Reply
@wishbone: Oops! Okay I will do that. I just saw a Wordpress plugin for mobile versions!
@Yixiao: Twitter was the way to go for a good 2 years-ish, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere just yet! Maybe you should get on Plurk first and see if it meets Gourmet Club’s needs. The dynamics between Plurk and Twitter are quite different.